After discovering the dead body of her teenage daughter's lover, a housewife takes desperate measures to protect her family from scandal.
In the charming community of Balboa 50 miles from Los Angeles, middle-class housewife Lucia Harper travels to Los Angeles to meet scoundrel, Ted Darby. Her seventeen year-old daughter Beatrice is in love with Ted. He asks for money to leave Bea, but Lucia refuses to give any. Bea does not believe her mother when told and during the night she sneaks out to the boat garage to meet Ted who admits that Lucia told the truth. Bea pushes him and Ted falls to his on an anchor. The next morning, Lucia finds the body and assumes that Bea has killed her lover. She decides to get rid of the corpse and puts it in her boat and dumps it far from home. When the police find Ted, a stranger, Martin Donnelly, visits Lucia to blackmail her on behalf of his partner, Nagel who has several letters Bea had written to Ted. Donnelly wants $5000 for the letters. The desperate Lucia tries to raise the amount. Martin falls in love with Lucia and tries to help her too. The dangerous Nagel wants to receive the amount at any price.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Desperate that her 17 year-old daughter Bea stop seeing the much older man she has been dating, Lucia Harper derives to Los Angeles to confront him. Ted Darby is exactly what she expected and he's quite amenable to stop seeing Bea - provided Lucia pays him appropriately. Lucia tells Bea what has transpired but the teenager refuses to believe her. When Bea meets meets Darby that evening in the Harper's boathouse, they argue and he dies in a subsequent fall. Lucia finds him the next morning and disposes of the body. Her troubles are only beginning however as one of Darby's friends, Martin Donnelly, arrives with some of Bea's letters to Darby in hand and blackmail on his mind.—garykmcd
With her husband away on business Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett) has her hands full at home with her teenaged daughter Bea (Geraldine Brooks) who has been keeping company with an older man Ted Darby (Shepperd Strudwick) whom Lucia distrusts. Darby claims ties to the Art world and that his interest in Bea is for her artist abilities, then one night after a meeting in which Bea realizes that Darby wants to use her for his own pleasure, she hits him and leaves. The next morning Lucia discovers Darbys dead body and believes that daughter Bea will be blamed so she dumps the body in the lagoon far from their house. Knowing that the police will have a difficult time tying Darby to Bea, Lucia relaxes until charming gangster Martin Donnelly (James Mason) arrives to tell her that his boss, a burley opportunist named Nagle (Roy Roberts) has love letters that Bea had sent to Darby clearly implicating her affection for the older man and surely enough evidence to insure that the girl would be arrested and tried for murder. Lucia argues with Donnelly as he has sensitivity that seems un-gangster-like, and she agrees to give him money but must sell what she owns since she doesnt have all the money available in her bank account. As Lucia and Donnelly move from bank to pawn shop to grocery store for the family, the blackmailer develops sympathy for the mother and house wife, and decides to abandon the blackmailing crime. When Nagle discovers that Donnelly is backing down from Lucia he goes to demand the money himself engaging in a battle with his minion.
